Budget Woes Spark Death Penalty Decline

States across the country consider scrapping the ultimate punishment

By Stefanie Faucher, Program Director of Death Penalty Focus

In March, New Mexico took the historic step of replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment—making it the fifteenth state to abandon capital punishment and the second state to do so legislatively in the last two years.

New Jersey’s legislature passed a similar bill in December 2007. In signing the legislation, New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson cited the extraordinarily high costs of retaining the death penalty